Learning dissent is never easy. One person’s prophet is another’s anti-Christ. One person’s conscience is another’s bigotry. Sometimes dissent can get you damned. Sometimes (like now?) silence can too.
Baptist pastors gather in Boston to discuss ministry in divisive times
Close to 40 Baptist ministers gathered in Boston Sept. 17-20 for Baptist News Global’s second Conversations that Matter event. Centered in church venues on and around Harvard University, the gathering this year was themed “Pastoral Leadership in a Polarized and…
Sunday morning becoming the most politically ‘segregated’ hour in America
Sunday morning is becoming an increasingly divided time in America. “If Sunday morning was the most segregated morning in American life, it may also be one of the most politicized hours in American life, implicitly or explicitly,” said Bill Leonard,…
Hear our prayer, O Congress: A neo-establishmentarianism?
Events surrounding the dismissal and rehiring of “Father Pat” are more than a mere legislative kerfuffle. They provide important contemporary lessons in the enduring dynamics of church-state relations — old tensions, new twists.
Signature ministries: ‘The art of human contacts’
The Catholic Worker Movement, one of the most important Christian social ministries of the modern era, began in 1933 in New York during the Great Depression. The founders, Catholic Peter Maurin and journalist/Catholic convert Dorothy Day initiated the movement, Day…
What’s a Baptist? Seminary aims to help Baptists figure that out
Congregations across the country are struggling to remain, or even achieve, relevance in their communities. The struggle is just as difficult for seminaries seeking to serve those churches.
‘Anticipatory mourning’: America’s youth on death, guns and dissent
We’ve ritualized death away from the young in this culture, in funeral homes and hospice facilities, but it has overtaken them with a vengeance in what were once safe spaces for learning.
Billy Graham’s influence on Christian unity still felt, say many who remember his preaching
The death of Billy Graham has evoked, once again, amazement at the evangelist’s unparalleled spiritual impact on American faith and culture. But it’s also stirred speculation about how long, and in what ways, Graham’s influence may endure.
Baptist brokenness: Reconciliation and revolution
I am sick to death of decades of our ceaseless inability to avoid personal, spiritual and communal schism in our churches and ourselves. Truth to tell, however, 2,000 years of Christian history illustrate that the same Jesus Story that unites all Christ’s church often drives it apart. I’ve often teased that “Baptists multiply by dividing.” It’s not funny anymore. Never was.